Stranglehold of expectations.

(another one from the decade and a half old diary. makes me smile now, cos the hysteria has died down.)

Thy ask me if I’m a feminist
I tell them I don’t know
But it hurts, oh yes, it hurts
When her fatigue is dismissed
And becomes a cooking vessel
When they cast the stone at her
Cos she did what he too did.

It hurts, godammit, it hurts
When she is called to be
The paragon of virtue
When she is put in her place
With ‘a woman is blah blah blah - -

It hurts, bl---y s—t, it hurts
When she is told
A lady shouldn’t speak like that
A lady shouldn’t sit like that
A lady shouldn’t think like that
A lady shouldn’t think at all.

Dash it, who the hell wants to be a lady?
What, by the way, is a lady?
Who, tell me, is to decide
How many lines a poem should have?

It hurts, oh God, it hurts
When one of your own gender
Turns around and fires
That final fatal shot.

Anniversary

(another entry in my diary - made a year after my mother's death. she, by the way, was the most powerful influence on me.)

A year since she left.

A year since the detonation

In the chest—or brain?

The steadying hand. Stunned Disbelief.

No more.

Gone.

Where?

Deaf to our grief

Dead to our grief

Where are you?

WHERE are you?

Then the vacuum.

The struggle for air in nothingness

Clawing to grasp the reality of absence.

The quake was better.

Can vacuum be so heavy? Oppressive?

Crushing the nerve from feeling the pain?

When was this sunya infused with grief?

When did it happen?

Brine and migraine

Sobs toppling poise?

Stealthily, absence grew into day to day existence

But - - - -WHERE are you?

Something in me sometimes screams

Can you just cease to be? What strange heaven bewitches you

That you choose not to reach out

And balm my pain

Which once you could not bear?

You too, heartless, ma?

Heart, I guess, belongs to the flesh and bone.

Alas!

MA

(i discovered an old diary today - and in it my poor attempts at writing poems. this was written a couple of months after my mother died.the metre was all wrong, so i left it. today metre matters little to me)

Her stars were all wrong

She should never have been

But gods for cruel fun

Willed it!

The formula was ideal

For the tragic role

Misfortunes they came

In battalion

She withstood them

Her soul unscathed

Never did she wallow

In self pity

Clamouring for sympathy

Was alien to her grain

She bore her jagged cross

With poise rare.

Knowing the sting of pain

She spanned out her wings

To shelter those writhing

In anguish great.

What strange philosophy

Permeated her being?

A complete and total

Denial of self?

Was it worth it, Ma?

Not having afforded them

Their amusement

Did the Gods greet you

Heads hung in shame?